Live Interior 3D 1.0.3

Ever want to see what your bedroom will look like before you hang that
paisley-print fuchsia wallpaper? Or perhaps you’d like to know
whether the expensive hardwood flooring or ceramic tile you’ve just
chosen for the kitchen will make the room too dark? Then look no
further. Live Interior 3D (LI3D) will let you create a virtual
replica of that room, or your entire house, with relative ease.

According to BeLight Software, the developers of Live Interior 3D, the
3D visualization of your home or office will encourage improvements and
help you to imagine your redesigned living space. LI3D can also assist
in choosing the dimensions and locations of new furniture within your
virtual mock-up, all at the planning stage. While this remarkable
software tool sounds like it could be dangerous in the hands of a
gung-ho spouse with a weekend renovation project in mind, having
her first create the virtual room in LI3D will buy you some time to
escape to the local public house go fishing or to the spa for a few days.

BeLight Software has moved rapidly from announcing the beta of LI3D in
January 2007, to the release of the first retail version on April 4,
which was quickly followed by the 1.0.3 update on April 26. While this
shows a very active and enthusiastic software company, it also means
that the program is quite young and has a lot of room to grow. Who will
ultimately gain the most from using LI3D: professional interior
designers or just the average householders? That’s a good question, and I
will reserve passing judgement ’til the conclusion.

My Virtual Kitchen Experience

I received a registration key for LI3D via e-mail on April 9, and
downloaded the program (which installed flawlessly) from the BeLight Web
site. Even though I ordered a boxed review copy on the same day, it just
arrived on May 16. There are two versions of the download available on
the Web site: one with accessory 3D content (the full version), and a
light version without this content. I mistakenly downloaded the light
version, and had to uninstall then reinstall the full version (without
problems) to get the benefit of the entire package, since the content
does not exist as a separate download.

If you have limited hard drive space, then the light version is for you,
and you can simply download any necessary 3D items for your room(s)
from Google 3D Warehouse.
LI3D provides a handy link to this site from which you can directly and
easily import 3D objects into your project. But be prepared to wade
through near-endless lists of items for even the most refined of
searches, and be prepared that many items in the warehouse are
created/donated by third-party individuals and are of less than stellar
quality. If you use 3D modeling software, then LI3D can also import 3DS
format files. In order for you to see what the stand-alone program was
capable of, I tried to create a room just with the objects available
within the program.

Since my wife and I are planning to renovate our kitchen soon, I thought
that creating a virtual model of it would provide us with a way to
compare and contrast various color and flooring scenarios with only a few
mouse clicks—and all before spending a cent on materials. While this
was a good choice from my pragmatic perspective, the kitchen is probably
the most difficult room to create in LI3D (or any design program) given
its tight tolerances, wide range of layouts, materials, and accessory
objects. I found it most challenging (a polite way to say much cursing
occurred) and wouldn’t recommend that anyone learn this program by
starting with a kitchen. You must be prepared to think laterally.

As I mentioned, I tried to create a room just with the objects available
within the program, and since there are no dishwashers or kitchen sinks
in the LI3D library, I had to improvise what you see from what was
available. The dishwasher is a resized and textured refrigerator placed
within a countertop cupboard. The kitchen sink is a resized bathroom
sink barely poking through the countertop, with an auxiliary
stainless steel–finished flat surface placed just above the countertop
level to look like the inside of the sink. Since none of the countertops
has an opening for a sink, and you cannot create an opening without
editing the countertop in a separate 3D program (or importing an object
from Google3D), this was the only way to achieve a relative illusion of
basin depth. The only item I downloaded from Google3D Warehouse was the
faucet, and for some bizarre reason it imported as two separate object
halves that had to be positioned together to make a whole. It took me
about a full day to get the project to a point where I was happy enough
to show my wife, and then a few more hours tweaking this and that. Like
any creative activity, you can really get caught up in the this’s and
that’s and need to know when to quit.

LI3D in action with the work area split into (from left to right)
the Library, 2D and 3D Panes, and the Inspector Window. The overhead
light is selected in each of these. (click to enlarge)

The LI3D Interface

The LI3D program window consists of a sparse main menu bar across the
top. In the workspace area are four main elements: the Library Panel,
the 2D and 3D View Panels, and finally the Inspector Window. The
Library Panel, 2D, and 3D View Panels can all be open at the same time
and adjusted for horizontal size via vertical “splitter bars.” The
locations of many secondary mode buttons and toolbar menus have nice
contextual arrangement within the relevant panels, while the Inspector
Window is a catch-all for most other functions, such as individual
Object Properties, including materials and texture choices, 2D and
3D Properties, and the Lights List. The Inspector Window is a
floating panel that can be toggled open and closed, but has very limited
sizing options. Most annoyingly, it does not disappear when the program
is reduced to the dock and requires another click to remove it from the
desktop. Several key functions are buried within the different modes of
the Inspector Window, such as the Make Screenshot button (the only way
to capture a 3D image from the program), which should really be in a
more obvious location, perhaps on the main menu bar or the 3D view panel.

One of the alternative Library Panel modes is the Project Tree, which
lists all elements within the room of the currently open LI3D file.
Items are grouped by object type and receive a default name when added
to the project, such as “Wall,” but unfortunately do not receive a
unique extension so all walls are just named “Wall.” It is up to you to
provide a meaningful nomenclature structure such as SouthWall, EastWall,
LeftChair, RightLamp, etc., and it is best to keep up with making these
changes before you have 65-plus objects, like in my LI3D kitchen file.

I have found many aspects of the program to be quite enjoyable to use,
while others are redundant (just how many ways do you need to lock an
object’s variables?) or awkward, such as the ability to select and
manipulate objects; a priority requirement for a program like this. If
an object sits on top of another like an item on a shelf, or within it
like my dishwasher, it is nearly impossible to select in either the 2D
or 3D view using a mouse click. You will have to open the Project Tree
to make the selection, but even then you may not be able to easily
manipulate it the way you want, if at all. For instance, you are limited
to rotating an object only on the Y axis. This was a problem for me when
I tried to rotate the knife handles and knife-block you see on the
countertop, which I created from resized and textured LI3D primitive
objects. The knife handles had to stay horizontal rather than at an
angle and is perhaps an inconsequential example, but is a significant
limitation overall.

You also cannot move objects with any precision by selecting and
dragging with the mouse. I found it best to use the arrow keys within
the 2D plan to get exact placement on the X and Z axis; however, Y-axis
elevation of the object must be entered with the keypad through a
process of several rounds of high-low guessing in the 3D view. Selecting
and dragging in the 3D view can also move most items in a crude manner,
but now the keyboard arrows will only move the position of the activated
camera—not the selected item—which is most redundant since there are
already camera arrow buttons on the 3D interface. Moving between the
Project Tree and the 2D and 3D views, all just to get the exact
placement of an object, is very frustrating and must be improved in the
future for better workflow.

Using the LI3D cameras also takes a little getting used to. The program
automatically provides five default cameras, but their positions are
fixed, and if you have anything in front of them, such as walls or
furniture (and what room doesn’t have walls and furniture?), then that
view is blocked. Thus, as far as I can tell, the default cameras are
next to useless, but you can easily add and rename your own custom
cameras and then move them around on the 2D view with the mouse. Any
camera can also be used in continuous 3D “Walk Mode” by simply clicking
the walk button in the 3D toolbar and then clicking on the
semi-transparent arrows that appear on the 3D view and holding the left
mouse button down. In order for these “walk-arounds” to work in anything
approaching a seamless manner, you need to set the render quality to the
minimum.

At this time there is no way to save predefined walk paths, such as you
might use to show a client. But in my opinion, the biggest deficiencies
with the cameras is that the field of view cannot be altered by changing
the lens length (i.e. adjusting from wide angle to zoom). Also, you
cannot use multiple 3D cameras at the same time within split views to
get different 3D perspectives, which would greatly aid in the accurate
placement of objects.

Making Images of Your Virtual Rooms

This now brings us to the topic of visual output and perhaps the
biggest limitation of the program. While LI3D will nicely produce images
of your 2D view, it has no 3D software render engine and
instead relies solely on the OpenGL hardware settings of your graphics
card. Therefore, making portable 3D images of your LI3D-created room is
functionally limited to taking screen shots by using either a per-vertex
or per-pixel lighting model. (Use per-pixel if your video card can handle
it.) The other available “render quality” settings involve only three
levels: plain (no lights), with lights, and lights with shadows, which
does not comprise much choice in my experience. I will let the
unadulterated LI3D images speak for themselves; they were created on my
Mac Pro with higher-end ATI X1900XT video card with 512 MB of RAM.

Our Virtual Kitchen

Our Virtual Kitchen

On the positive, I found that the ability to geographically align my room
(according to both compass orientation and latitude) and then use the
sun/moonlight settings (morning, daytime, evening, and night) was a
wonderfully creative software feature, which added an element of realism I
was not expecting. Adding other illumination to your room is as simple
as going to the object library to choose a lamp or light fixture,
dragging it to either project view panel, positioning it, and tweaking
the light color and luminosity level. While this is quite simple, I
found that the luminosity slider was poorly calibrated since the lowest
setting should be zero, or no light. In the screenshots of my LI3D
kitchen, with the three artificial light sources all set at the lowest
setting, I found each light source to be too bright compared to the real
lights in our kitchen (sorry, my wife refuses to let me publish a
pre-renovated picture of our modest townhouse kitchen…you’ll have to
wait).

Changing colors and/or materials on your walls, floors, or objects is a
delight to do and requires only that the object be selected, the
particular sub-material of the object be selected in the inspector
window (if it has multiple materials/surfaces), and then the
texture/color choice made from the pop-ups. My only complaints
are that the outside environment (a quite virtual-looking sky and a
green surface—not grass by any means) cannot be replaced by your own
digital image and that the stock texture and color choices are rather
limited. However, there is the ability to import your own object
textures or copy and alter stock colors to create new ones, and you
could always replace the outside environment from the windows/doors of
the screen shots in an image-adjusting program.

Other features are also really quite handy. For example, if you have an
existing blueprint or floor plan of your house or office, then it can be
scanned and imported as a starting point to shape walls. Pre-prepared
room templates, complete with furniture and lighting, are also available
as starting points; however, they are limited to only a few bedrooms,
living rooms, and offices.

Live Interior 3D and Your Macintosh

The minimum system requirements from the user’s guide are rather
understated, as my 1.8 GHz G5 iMac meets even the recommended hardware
requirements (it exceeds all except the 128 MB of video RAM; it only has
64 MB), yet it runs painfully slow with the “spinning beach ball of death”
appearing for such simple things as renaming objects in the Project
Tree. Not surprising, LI3D blazes on my Mac Pro.

BeLight operates a support forum in which a small but
active community is forming, posting its LI3D questions, and making
suggestions and requests for future releases. It is a good place to pick
up tips that you won’t find in the user’s guide, such as how to “fake” a
mirror, since LI3D does not have a 3D render engine to calculate
reflected light paths, and apparently there is no plan to support this
in the future. I posted a suggestion that a screen shot of the room
could be taken from the mirror’s perspective and then that image
applied as a surface texture to any item you want to have reflections
(what would be called a reflection map in other 3D programs). It works
with a bit of manipulation in an image-adjusting program.

Conclusion

I’m going to be honest: if I had paid full price for this program I
would have been initially disappointed for all the reasons above. That
said, and as I mentioned before, this is a very young program and
improvements via free updates appear to be forthcoming at a good pace.
For the average individual without 3D program experience and using this
to generate room plans and images for personal use, LI3D hits the
mark with a Good rating. If I were thinking about purchasing it for a
small interior design company, then I’d seriously look at the other
software options and
compare/contrast features and image output. Since LI3D does not export
3D files into other programs and has no software render capabilities,
then I would say stay away from it for any serious or recreational 3D
artwork.

For this program to have gotten a Very Nice rating or higher, I would
expect overall better quality images from the 3D views, a way of saving
walk paths for presentation purposes, better options and workflow for
manipulating objects, and the ability to change the default outdoor
environment or import more realistic 2D images. This last issue is
almost a necessity and would vastly improve the appeal of the
flat-appearing screen shots.

While the access to Google3D Warehouse functions adequately, I
would also like to see more and better quality in-program objects, color
choices, and textures rather than have the onus of doing this myself.
In particular, I found the wood grain to be particularly disappointing
once applied to the virtual cabinets of my created kitchen, and there
was no way to hide/change the huge and rather ugly handles the cabinets
came with. However, if you have a certain look in mind and are
tenacious, you can import much better textures or items from a vast
array of free online sources.

Reader Comments (10)

As of July 2007, LI3D has been updated to version 1.2 with the following additions:

"The update features grouping functionality, that allows you to create multi-level groups of any objects, compose new objects from different blocks and objects. It also adds 50+ new objects and 50+ new materials, alignment and distribute options for 3D objects, other interface and technical improvements."

Lee,No, there was no mac compatible software back in 2007. Well,'Punch' did come out with Home Design Studio for Mac towards the end of 2007, but as someone wrote, it's nothing more than a 'crippled' version of the original. I bought Live Interiors 3D because Home Design Studio was so frustrating to use It took forever to render with lights and nshadows on and locked up if you had anything more than 2 lights in the plan. I'm at my LID constantly. It's versatile and very user friendly. AND, they have another upgrade (free by the way) that just came out today.

Eve - By nature of ATPM strictly focusing on the Macintosh platform, we'd have to imagine that links provided within an article were, at the time, Mac-centric. If they weren't, then it was an oversight because the only time we would reference Windows resources is for cases when the purpose of those resources was to provide interoperability between platforms.

If Chris has no other online links to share, then we may just have to rely on other readers who may have information they can post to this page.

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